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copy of skrzynecki poems (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter amied92
- Start date
here i found a few in another thread
Post card
1
A post card sent by a friend
Haunts me
Since its arrival –
Warsaw: Panorama of the Old Town
He requests I show it
To my parents.
Red buses on a bridge
Emerging from a corner –
High-rise flats and something
Like a park borders
The river with its concrete pylons.
The sky’s the brightest shade.
2
Warsaw, Old Town,
I never knew you
Except in the third person –
Great city
That bombs destroyed,
Its people massacred
Or exiled – You survived
In the minds
Of a dying generation
Half a world away.
They shelter you
And defend the patterns
Of your remaking,
Condemn ypur politics,
Cherish your old religion
And drink to freedom
Under the White Eagle’s flag.
For the moment,
I repeat, I never knew you,
Let me be.
I’ve seen red buses
Elsewhere
And all rivers have
An obstinate galre.
My father
Will be proud
Of your domes and towers,
My mother
Will speak of her
Beloved Ukraine.
What’s my choice
To be?
I can give you
The recognition
Of eyesight and praise.
What more
Do you want
Besides
The gift of despair?
3
I stare
At the photograph
And refuse to answer
The voices
Of red gables
And a cloudless sky.
On the river’s bank
A lone tree
Whispers:
“We will meet
Before you die.”
Feliks Skrzynecki
My gentle father
Kept pace only with the Joneses
Of his own mind’s making –
Loved his garden like an only child,
Spent years walking its perimeter
From sunrise to sleep.
Alert, brisk and silent,
He swept its paths
Ten times around the world.
Hands darkened
From cement, fingers with cracks
Like the sods he broke,
I often wondered how he existed
On five or six hours’ sleep each night –
Why his arms didn’t fall off
From the soil he turned
And tobacco he rolled.
His Polish friends
Always shook hands too violently,
I thought… Feliks Skrzynecki,
That formal address
I never got used to.
Talking, they reminisced
About farms where paddocks flowered
With corn and wheat,
Horses they bred, pigs
They were skilled in slaughtering.
Five years of forced labour in Germany
Did not dull the softness of his blue eyes
I never once heard
Him complain of work, the weather
Or pain. When twice
They dug cancer out of his foot,
His comment was: ‘but I’m alive’.
Growing older, I
Remember words he taught me,
Remnants of a language
I inherited unknowingly –
The curse that damned
A crew-cut, grey-haired
Department clerk
Who asked me in dancing-bear grunts:
‘Did your father ever attempt to learn English?’
On the back steps of his house,
Bordered by golden cypress,
Lawns – geraniums younger
Than both parents,
My father sits out the evening
With his dog, smoking,
Watching stars and street lights come on,
Happy as I have never been.
At thirteen,
Stumbling over tenses in Caesar’s Gallic War,
I forgot my first Polish word.
He repeated it so I never forgot.
After that, like a dumb prophet,
Watched me pegging my tents
Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall.
Migrant Hostel. Parkes, 1949-51
No one kept count
Of all the comings and goings –
Arrivals of newcomers
In busloads from the station,
Sudden departments from adjoining blocks
That left us wondering
Who would be coming next.
Nationalities sought
Each other out instinctively –
Like a homing pigeon
Circling to get its bearings;
Years and place-names
Recognised by accents,
Partitioned off at night
By memories of hunger and hate.
For over two years
We lived like birds of passage –
Always sensing a change
In the weather:
Unaware of the season
Whose track we would follow.
A barrier at the main gate
Sealed off the highway
From our doorstep –
As it rose and fell like a finger
Pointed in reprimand or shame;
And daily we passed
Underneath or alongside it –
Needing its sanction
To pass in and out of lives
That had only begun
Or were dying.
Post card
1
A post card sent by a friend
Haunts me
Since its arrival –
Warsaw: Panorama of the Old Town
He requests I show it
To my parents.
Red buses on a bridge
Emerging from a corner –
High-rise flats and something
Like a park borders
The river with its concrete pylons.
The sky’s the brightest shade.
2
Warsaw, Old Town,
I never knew you
Except in the third person –
Great city
That bombs destroyed,
Its people massacred
Or exiled – You survived
In the minds
Of a dying generation
Half a world away.
They shelter you
And defend the patterns
Of your remaking,
Condemn ypur politics,
Cherish your old religion
And drink to freedom
Under the White Eagle’s flag.
For the moment,
I repeat, I never knew you,
Let me be.
I’ve seen red buses
Elsewhere
And all rivers have
An obstinate galre.
My father
Will be proud
Of your domes and towers,
My mother
Will speak of her
Beloved Ukraine.
What’s my choice
To be?
I can give you
The recognition
Of eyesight and praise.
What more
Do you want
Besides
The gift of despair?
3
I stare
At the photograph
And refuse to answer
The voices
Of red gables
And a cloudless sky.
On the river’s bank
A lone tree
Whispers:
“We will meet
Before you die.”
Feliks Skrzynecki
My gentle father
Kept pace only with the Joneses
Of his own mind’s making –
Loved his garden like an only child,
Spent years walking its perimeter
From sunrise to sleep.
Alert, brisk and silent,
He swept its paths
Ten times around the world.
Hands darkened
From cement, fingers with cracks
Like the sods he broke,
I often wondered how he existed
On five or six hours’ sleep each night –
Why his arms didn’t fall off
From the soil he turned
And tobacco he rolled.
His Polish friends
Always shook hands too violently,
I thought… Feliks Skrzynecki,
That formal address
I never got used to.
Talking, they reminisced
About farms where paddocks flowered
With corn and wheat,
Horses they bred, pigs
They were skilled in slaughtering.
Five years of forced labour in Germany
Did not dull the softness of his blue eyes
I never once heard
Him complain of work, the weather
Or pain. When twice
They dug cancer out of his foot,
His comment was: ‘but I’m alive’.
Growing older, I
Remember words he taught me,
Remnants of a language
I inherited unknowingly –
The curse that damned
A crew-cut, grey-haired
Department clerk
Who asked me in dancing-bear grunts:
‘Did your father ever attempt to learn English?’
On the back steps of his house,
Bordered by golden cypress,
Lawns – geraniums younger
Than both parents,
My father sits out the evening
With his dog, smoking,
Watching stars and street lights come on,
Happy as I have never been.
At thirteen,
Stumbling over tenses in Caesar’s Gallic War,
I forgot my first Polish word.
He repeated it so I never forgot.
After that, like a dumb prophet,
Watched me pegging my tents
Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall.
Migrant Hostel. Parkes, 1949-51
No one kept count
Of all the comings and goings –
Arrivals of newcomers
In busloads from the station,
Sudden departments from adjoining blocks
That left us wondering
Who would be coming next.
Nationalities sought
Each other out instinctively –
Like a homing pigeon
Circling to get its bearings;
Years and place-names
Recognised by accents,
Partitioned off at night
By memories of hunger and hate.
For over two years
We lived like birds of passage –
Always sensing a change
In the weather:
Unaware of the season
Whose track we would follow.
A barrier at the main gate
Sealed off the highway
From our doorstep –
As it rose and fell like a finger
Pointed in reprimand or shame;
And daily we passed
Underneath or alongside it –
Needing its sanction
To pass in and out of lives
That had only begun
Or were dying.
Here's a list of links to the poems: Where to find Peter Skrzynecki’s poems? Tutor Tales
mars16682000
New Member
- Joined
- May 20, 2009
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- 2010
ancestors
Who are these shadows
That hang over you in a dream -
The bearded, faceless men
Stnaging shoulder to shoulder?
What secrets
Do they whisper into the darkness -
Why do their eyes
Never close?
Where do they point to
From the circle around you -
To what star
Do their footprints lead?
Behind them are
Mountains, the sound of a river,
A moonlit plain
Of grasses and sand.
Why do they
Never speak - how long
Is their wait to be?
Why do you wake
As their faces become clearer -
Your tongue dry
As caked mud?
From across the plain
Where sand and grasses never stir
The wind tastes of blood.
lol i typed this up
Who are these shadows
That hang over you in a dream -
The bearded, faceless men
Stnaging shoulder to shoulder?
What secrets
Do they whisper into the darkness -
Why do their eyes
Never close?
Where do they point to
From the circle around you -
To what star
Do their footprints lead?
Behind them are
Mountains, the sound of a river,
A moonlit plain
Of grasses and sand.
Why do they
Never speak - how long
Is their wait to be?
Why do you wake
As their faces become clearer -
Your tongue dry
As caked mud?
From across the plain
Where sand and grasses never stir
The wind tastes of blood.
lol i typed this up